Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

But the royal and heroic character must with Homer, at least when exhibited at its climax, be all comprehensive. As it soars to every thing above, so, without stooping, must it be master of every thing beneath it. Accordingly, the Poet has given it the last touch in the accomplishments of Ulysses. As he proves himself a wood-cutter and ship-builder in the island of Calypso, so he is no stranger to the plough and the scythe; and he fairly challenges87 Eurymachus the Suitor to try which of them would soonest clear the meadow of its grass, which drive the straightest furrow down a four-acre field.

So much for the corporeal accomplishments of the Greek kings and princes; of their intellectual powers we shall have to treat in considering the character of the governments of the heroic age.

The Kings as Gentlemen.

But these accomplishments, mental and bodily, are not vulgarly heaped upon his characters by Homer, as if they were detailed in a boarding-school catalogue. The Homeric king should have that which incorporates and harmonizes them all: he should be emphatically a gentleman, and that in a sense not far from the one familiar to the Christian civilization of Europe. Nestor, Diomed, Menelaus, are in a marked manner gentlemen. Agamemnon is less so; but here Homer shows his usual discrimination, for in Agamemnon there is a sordid vein, which most of all mars this peculiar tone of character. It is, however, in the two superlative heroes of the poems, that we see the strongest development of those habits of feeling and action, which belong to the gentleman. It will be admitted that one of these traits is the love of that which is straightforward, truthful, and above-board. According to the vulgar conception of the character of Ulysses, he has no credit for this quality. But whatever the Ulysses of Virgil or of Euripides may be, the Ulysses of Homer, though full of circumspection, reserve, and even stratagem in dealing with enemies and strangers, has nothing about him of what is selfish, tricky, or faithless. And, accordingly, it is into his mouth that Homer has put the few and simple words, which rebuke the character of the informer and the tale-bearer, with a severity greater perhaps even than, under the circumstances, was necessary. When he is recognised by Euryclea, he strictly enjoins upon her the silence, on which all their lives at the moment depended. Hurt by the supposition that she could (in our homely phrase) be likely to blab, she replies that she will hold herself in, hard as stone or as iron. She adds, that she will point out to him which of the women in the palace are faithful, and which are guilty. No, he replies; I will observe them for myself; that is not your business88:

μαῖα, τίη δὲ σὺ τὰς μυθήσεαι; οὐδέ τί σε χρή·εὖ νυ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ φράσομαι καὶ εἴσομ’ ἑκάστην·ἀλλ’ ἔχε σιγῇ μῦθον, ἐπίτρεψον δὲ θεοῖσιν.

Achilles as a Gentleman.

As Homer has thus sharply exhibited Ulysses in the character of a gentleman with respect to truth89, so he has made the same exhibition for Achilles with respect to courtesy: protesting, as it were, in this manner by anticipation against the degenerate conceptions of those characters, which were to reproduce and render current through the world Achilles as a brute, and Ulysses as a thorough knave. But let us see the residue of the proof.

In the first Iliad, when the wrath is in the first flush of its heat, the heralds Talthybius and Eurybates are sent to his encampment, with the appalling commission to bring away Briseis. On entering, they remain awe-struck and silent. Though, in much later times, we know that

The messenger of evil tidingsHath but a losing office,

he at once relieves them from their embarrassment, and bids them personally welcome;

χαίρετε, κήρυκες, Διὸς ἄγγελοι, ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν·ἆσσον ἴτ’90·

And he desires Patroclus to bring forth the object of their quest. More extraordinary self-command and considerateness than this, never has been ascribed by any author to any character.

Again, when in the Ninth Book he is surprised in his seclusion by the envoys Phœnix, Ulysses, and Ajax, though he is prepared to reject every offer, he hails them all personally, without waiting to be addressed and with the utmost kindness91, as of all the Greeks the dearest to him even in his wrath; he of course proceeds to order an entertainment for them. But the most refined of all his attentions is that shown to Agamemnon in the Twenty-third Book. Inferior to Ajax, Diomed, and Ulysses, Agamemnon could not enter into the principal games, to be beaten by any abler competitor, without disparagement to his office: while there would also have been a serious disparagement of another kind in his contending with a secondary person. Accordingly, Achilles at the close makes a nominal match for the use of the sling – of which we never hear elsewhere in the poems – and, interposing after the candidates are announced, but before the actual contest, he presents the chief prize to Agamemnon, with this compliment; that there need be no trial, as every one is aware already how much he excels all others in the exercise.

Yet these great chiefs, so strong and brave and wise, so proud and stern, so equipped in arts, manners, and accomplishments, can upon occasion weep like a woman or a child. Ulysses, in the island of Calypso daily pours forth his ‘waterfloods’ as he strains his vision over the sea; and he covers up his head in the halls of Alcinous, while Demodocus is singing, that his tears may flow unobserved. And so Achilles, fresh from his fierce vengeance on the corpse of Hector, yet, when the Trojan king92 has called up before his mind the image of his father Peleus, at the thought now of his aged parent, and now of his slaughtered friend, sheds tears as tender as those of Priam for his son, and lets his griefs overflow in a deep compassion for the aged suppliant before him. Nor is it only in sorrow that we may remark a high susceptibility. The Greek chieftains in general are acutely sensible of praise and of blame. Telemachus93 is delighted when Ægyptius commends him as a likely looking youth: and even Ulysses, first among them all in self-command, is deeply stung by the remark of the saucy Phæacian on his appearance, and replies upon the offender with excellent sense, but with an extraordinary pungency94. A similar temper is shown in all the answers of the chieftains to Agamemnon when he goes the round of the army95.

Rights of Hereditary Succession.

The hereditary character of the royal office is stamped upon almost every page of the poems; as nearly all the chiefs, whose lineage we are able to trace, have apparently succeeded their fathers in power. The only exception in the order, of which we are informed, is one where, probably on account of the infancy of the heir, the brother of the deceased sovereign assumes his sceptre. In this way Thyestes, uncle to Agamemnon, succeeded his father Atreus, and then, evidently without any breach of regularity, transmitted it to Agamemnon.

And such is probably the reason why, Orestes being a mere child96, a part of the dignity of Agamemnon is communicated to Menelaus. For in the Iliad he has a qualified supremacy; receives jointly with Agamemnon the present of Euneus; is more royal, higher in rank, than the other chieftains: we are also told of him97, μέγα πάντων Ἀργείων ἤνασσε; and he came to the second meeting of γέροντες in the Second Book αὐτόματος, without the formality of a summons.

In a case like that of Thyestes, if we may judge from what actually happened, the uncle would perhaps succeed instead of the minor, whose hereditary right would in such case be postponed until the next turn.

The case of Telemachus in the Odyssey is interesting in many ways, as unfolding to us the relations of the family life of the period. Among other points which it illustrates, is that of the succession to sovereignty. It was admitted by the Suitors, that it descended to him from his father98. Yet there evidently was some special, if not formal act to be done, without which he could not be king. For Antinous expresses his hope that Jupiter will never make Telemachus king of Ithaca. Not because the throne was full, for, on the contrary, the death of Ulysses was admitted or assumed to have occurred99; but apparently because this act, whatever it was, had not been performed in his case.

Perhaps the expressions of Antinous imply that such a proceeding was much more than formal, and that the accession of Telemachus to the supreme dignity might be arrested by the dissent of the nobles. The answer too of the young prince100 (τῶν κέν τις τόδ’ ἔχῃσιν) seems to be at least in harmony with the idea that a practice, either approaching to election, or in some way involving a voluntary action on the part of the subjects or of a portion of them, had to be gone through. But the personal dignity of the son of Ulysses was unquestioned. Even the Suitors pay a certain regard to it in the midst of their insolence: and when the young prince goes into the place of assembly101, he takes his place upon his father’s seat, the elders spontaneously making way for him to assume it.

Rights of primogeniture.

It may, however, be said with truth, that Telemachus was an only son, and that accordingly we cannot judge from his case whether it was the right of the eldest to succeed. Whether the rights of primogeniture were acknowledged among the Greeks of the heroic age, is a question of much interest to our own. For, on the one hand, there is a disposition to canvass and to dispute those rights. On the other hand, we live in a state of society, to which they probably have contributed more largely than any other specific cause, after the Christian religion, to give its specific form. Homer has supplied us with but few cases of brotherhood among his greater characters. We see, however, that Agamemnon everywhere bears the character of the elder, and he appears to have succeeded in that capacity to the throne of Atreus, while Menelaus, the younger, takes his inheritance in virtue of his wife. Tyro, in the Eleventh Odyssey, is said to have borne, on the banks of the Enipeus, the twins Pelias and Neleus. In this passage the order in which the children are named is most probably that of age102. We find Pelias reigning in Iolcus, a part of the original country of the Æolids: while Neleus emigrates, and, either by or before marrying Chloris, becomes king of Pylos in the south of Greece103. Of the two brothers Protesilaus and Podarces, the former, who is also the elder, commands the force from Phylace. He was, however, braver, as well as older. This statement of the merits, ages, and positions of the two brothers raises a question applicable to other cases where two brothers are joined without ostensible discrimination in command. Of these there are four in the Catalogue. The first is that of Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, whom their mother Astyoche bore clandestinely to Mars, ὑπερώϊον εἰσαναβᾶσα. The expression seems to imply, that it was at a single birth. But even by this supposition we do not get rid of the idea of seniority in this case; nor can we suppose all the pairs to have been twins. We naturally therefore ask, whether this conjunction implied equality in command? We may probably venture to answer, without much doubt, in the negative. On the one hand, there is nothing unlikely in the supposition that the first named of two brothers was the eldest, and had the chief command. While on the other hand it is certain, that there is no case of two coequal commanders except it be among these four, which are all cases of brothers; and which, under the interpretation which seems the most natural one they can receive, would bear fresh testimony to the prevalence of the custom of primogeniture. Again, among the sons of Nestor, who are exhibited to us as surrounding him in the Third Odyssey, we may perhaps find, from the offices assigned to them at the solemn sacrifice and otherwise, decisive signs of primogeniture. Pisistratus steps forward to greet Telemachus on his arrival, and leads him to his seat104, sleeps near him under the portico, and accompanies him on his journey. But these functions appertain to him because he was the bachelor (ἠΐθεος) of the family, as we are appropriately told in reference to his taking a couch near the guest, while the married persons always slept in some separate and more private part of the palace105. Pisistratus, therefore, was probably the youngest son. But it is also pretty clear that Thrasymedes was the eldest. For in the sacrifice he strikes the fatal blow at the ox: while Stratius and Echephron bring it up, Aretus holds the ewer and basin, Perseus holds the lamb, Pisistratus cuts up the animal and Nestor performs the religious rites of prayer and sacrifice106.

And again, when Pisistratus brings up Telemachus and the disguised Minerva, he places them, evidently as in the seat of honour, ‘beside his brother Thrasymedes and his father.’

This is in perfect consonance with our finding Thrasymedes only, together with Antilochus who fell, selected for service in the Trojan war.

Upon this question, again, an important collateral light is cast by Homer’s mythological arrangements. They are, in fact, quite conclusive on the subject of primogeniture among the Hellenes. The Olympian order is founded upon it. It is as the eldest of the three Kronid brothers, and by no other title, that Jupiter stands at the head of the Olympian community. With respect to the lottery, he is but one of three. His being the King of Air invests him with no right to command the King of Sea. In the Fifteenth Book, as he is of nearly equal force, Neptune declines to obey his orders until reminded by Iris of his seniority. The Erinues, says the Messenger Goddess, attend upon the elder. That is to say, his rights lie at the foundation of the moral order. Upon this suggestion, the refractory deity at once succumbs107. And, reciprocally, Jupiter in the Thirteenth Odyssey recognises the claim of Neptune to respect as the oldest and best (of course after himself) of the gods108. —

Thus exalted and severed in rank, thus beautiful in person, thus powerful in hand and mind, thus associated with the divine fountain of all human honours, the Greek Βασιλεύς of the Iliad has other claims, too, to be regarded as representing, more nearly perhaps than it has ever been represented by any other class of monarchs, a benignant and almost ideal kingship. The light of these great stars of heroic society was no less mild than it was bright; and they might well have supplied the basis of that idea of the royal character, which has given it so extraordinary a hold over the mind of Shakspeare, and led him to adorn it by such noble effusions of his muse.

Function of the King as Priest.

The Homeric King appears before us in the fourfold character of Priest, Judge, General, and Proprietor.

It has already been remarked, that no priest appears among the Greeks of the Troic age; and, in conformity with this view, we find Agamemnon in the Iliad, and Nestor in the Odyssey, charged with the actual performance of the rite of sacrifice; nor is it apparently committed to any other person than the head of the society, assisted by his κήρυκες, officers who acted as heralds and as serjeants, or by his sons.

But while this was the case in regard to what may be called state sacrifices, which were also commonly banquets, we likewise learn, as to those of a more private character, that they must have been performed by the head of the household. To slay an animal for food is in every case to sacrifice him (ἱερεύειν) whether in the camp, the palace of Nestor, the unruly company of the Suitors, or the peaceful cottage of Eumelus; and every animal ready for the knife was called an ἱερήϊον109.

As Judge and as General.

The judicial office of the king is made known to us, first, by the character of Minos. While on earth, he had direct communications from Jupiter, which probably referred to the administration of justice; and, in the Shades beneath, we find him actually exercising the office of the judge. Nothing with which we become acquainted in Homer has the semblance of criminal justice, except the fines for homicide; and even these have no more than the semblance only. The punishment was inflicted, like other fines, as an adjustment or compensation110 between man and man, and not in satisfaction of the offence against public morality, peace, or order.

In the Second Iliad, the remonstrance of Ulysses with the commonalty declares that it is the king, and to the king alone, to whom Jupiter has committed the sceptre and the administration of justice, that by these he may fulfil his regal office111:

εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω,εἷς βασιλεὺς, ᾧ ἔδωκε Κρόνου παῖς ἀγκυλομήτεωσκῆπτρόν τ’ ἠδὲ θέμιστας, ἵνα σφίσιν ἐμβασιλεύῃ.

Now the sceptre is properly the symbol of the judicial authority, as we know from the oath of Achilles112:

νῦν αὖτέ μιν υἷες Ἀχαιῶνἐν παλάμῃς φορέουσι δικασπόλοι, οἵτε θέμισταςπρὸς Διὸς εἰρύαται.

From the combined effect of the two passages it is clear that the duties of the judicature, the determination of relative rights between the members of the community, constituted, at least in great part, the primary function of sovereignty. Still the larger conception of it, which includes the deliberative office, is that presented to us in the speech of Nestor to Agamemnon, on the occasion of the Council which followed the Night-assembly113.

καί τοι Ζεὺς ἐγγυάλιξενσκῆπτρόν τ’, ἠδὲ θέμιστας, ἵνα σφίσι βουλεύῃσθα.

The judicial function might, however, even in the days of Homer, be exercised by delegation. For in the Assembly graven on the Shield, while the parties contend, and the people sympathize some with one and some with the other, it is the γέροντες, or elders, who deliver judgment114. Of these persons each holds the sceptre in his hands. The passage, Il. i. 237, seems to speak of one sceptre held by many persons: this scene on the Shield exhibits to us several sceptres. In the simile of the crooked judgments, a plurality of judges115 are referred to. But as we never hear of an original and independent authority, like that of Il. ii. 204, in the senators or nobles, it seems most likely that they acted judicially by an actual or virtual delegation from the king.

The duty of the king to command his troops is inscribed on every page of the Iliad; and the only limit to it seems to have been, that upon the approach of old age it was delegated to the heir, or to more than one of the family, even before the entire withdrawal of the sire from public cares. The martial character of the sovereign was indeed ideally distinguishable from his regal one; for Agamemnon was116

ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς, κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής.

Still, martial excellence was expected of him. When Hippolochus despatched his son Glaucus to Troy, he enjoined him always to be valiant, and always to excel his comrades in arms117.

Lastly, the king was a proprietor. Ulysses had very large landed property, and as many herds and flocks, says Eumæus in a spirit of loyal exaggeration, as any twenty chiefs alive118. And Homer, who always reserves his best for the Lycians, has made Sarpedon declare, in an incomparable speech, the virtual condition on which estates like these were held. He desires Glaucus to recollect, why it is that they are honoured in Lycia with precedence at banquets, and with greater portions than the rest, why looked upon as deities, why endowed with great estates of pasture and corn land by the banks of Xanthus; it is that they may the more boldly face the burning battle, and be great in the eyes and in the minds of their companions. So entirely is the idea of dignity and privilege in the Homeric king founded upon the sure ground of duty, of responsibility, and of toil119.

What Hippolochus taught, and Sarpedon stated, is in exact correspondence with the practical part of the narrative of Glaucus in the Sixth Book. When Bellerophon had fully approved himself in Lycia by his prowess, the king of the country gave him his daughter in marriage, together with one half of his kingdom; and the Lycians presented him with a great and fertile demesne.

As proprietor; the τέμενος.

This estate is called τέμενος; a name never applied in Homer but to the properties of deities and of rulers. He uses the word with reference to the glebe-lands of

Spercheius, Il. xxiii. 148.

Venus, Od. viii. 362.

Ceres, Il. ii. 696.

Jupiter, Il. viii. 48.

And to the domains of

Bellerophon, Il. vi. 194.

Æneas (promised by the Trojan community if he should slay Achilles), Il. xx. 184.

Meleager, Il. ix. 574.

Sarpedon and Glaucus, Il. xii. 313.

The βασιλεὺς on the Shield, Il. xviii. 550.

Iphition (πολέων ἡγήτωρ λαῶν), Il. xx. 391.

Alcinous, Od. vi. 293.

Ulysses, Od. xi. 184, and xvii. 299.

On the other hand, the merely rich man (Il. xi. 68) has an ἄρουρα, not a τέμενος; and the farm of Laertes is called ἀγρὸς, not τέμενος. And why? Because it was a private possession, acquired by him apparently out of savings (Od. xxiv. 206);

ὅν ῥά ποτ’ αὐτὸςΛαέρτης κτεάτισσεν, ἐπεὶ μάλα πόλλ’ ἐμόγησεν.

The word τέμενος is probably from τέμνω, or from the same root with that verb, and signifies land which, having been cut off from the original common stock, available for the uses of private persons, has been set apart for one of the two great public purposes, of government or of religion.

Revenues and burdens on them.

Besides their great estates, the kings appear to have had at least two other sources of revenue. One of these was not without resemblance in form to what we now call customs’-duties, and may have contained their historical germ. In the Book of Genesis, where the sons of Jacob go down to buy corn in Egypt, they carry with them a present for the ruler; and doubtless the object of this practice was to conciliate the protection to which, as foreigners, and perhaps as suspected persons, avowedly seeking their own gain, they would not otherwise have had a claim. ‘Take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present; a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds120.’ In conformity with the practice thus exemplified, when Euneus in the Seventh Iliad despatches his ships from Lemnos to sell wine to the Greek army, in return for which they obtain slaves, hides, and other commodities, he sends a separate supply, χίλια μέτρα, as a present to the two sons of Atreus121. Agamemnon indeed is, in the Ninth Book, slily twitted by Nestor with the largeness of the stores of wine, that he had contrived to accumulate.

So likewise we find that certain traders, sailing to Scheria, made a present to Alcinous, as the sovereign, of the captive Eurymedusa. When we compare this with the case of Euneus, the gift obviously appears to have been a consideration for permission to trade122.

The other source of revenue traceable in the Iliad was one sure to lead to the extensive corruptions, which must already have prevailed in the time of Hesiod. It consisted in fees upon the administration of justice. In the suit described upon the shield, the matter at issue is a fine for homicide. But quite apart, as it would seem, from this fine, there lie in the midst, duly ‘paid into court,’ two talents of gold, to be given at the close to him, of all the judges, who should deliver the most upright, that is the most approved, judgment123:

τῷ δόμεν ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴποι.

However righteous the original intention of a payment in this form, it is easy to estimate its practical tendencies, and curious to remark how early in the course of time they were realized.

On the other hand, the great possessions of the king were not given him for his own use alone. Over and above the general obligation of hospitality to strangers, it was his duty to entertain liberally the principal persons among his subjects. Doubtless this provided the excuse, which enabled the Suitors to feast upon the stores of Ulysses, without the shame, in the very outset, of absolute rapine. And it would appear from the Odyssey that Alitherses124 and other friends of the royal house, frequented the table there as well as its enemies, though not perhaps so constantly.

In the Seventh Iliad, after his fight with Hector, Ajax125 repairs, not invited, but as if it were a matter of course, to share the hospitality of Agamemnon. In the Ninth Book, Nestor urges Agamemnon to give a feast to the elders, as a duty of his office:

ἔοικέ τοι, οὔτοι ἀεικές126,

adding, and then to take their counsel. But perhaps the ordinary exercise of this duty is best exhibited in the case of Alcinous, who is discovered by Ulysses on his arrival entertaining his brother kings in his palace127.